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VUCA World! 5 Principles to Stay Agile.

Xavier Joseph
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous: VUCA is the new normal. This requires developing new mindsets, habits and strategies in order to transform waves of random changes into waves of opportunities. The June-July 2017 French edition of the Harvard Business Review has featured interesting articles on “Strategies for a Random Future”. From my experience and building on this later reading, here are 5 principles I believe to remain agile in our VUCA world.

1. Define a purpose, a superior goal, a global identity: what do we stand for? This is an elementary principle of effectiveness: “start with the end in mind”. It is about why we are doing things before what are the things we are doing. It also enables to embrace the paradoxes and the interdependencies of controversial, competing strategies and behaviours within one company. The above-mentioned French edition of the HBR gives very interesting examples on this. Back in 2009, the Nasa scientists were reluctant to engage into open research because they feared that their individual contributions would not be recognized. In order to promote collaborative innovation between internal and external scientists, the Nasa defined its mission as “to guarantee the security of astronauts”. At Lego, in order to articulate a historical culture of operational excellence with the necessity for disruptive innovation, the company defined its mission as “build the builders of tomorrow”. Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, said: “What a joy to fall on a paradox. We can now hope to make progress.” Last but not least, defining a purpose is all the more important that the new generation of talents is more motivated by meaningful work and purpose-driven teams than standout individuals.

2. Capture a rich knowledge from our business environments that become broader with blurred boundaries. The future is made of non-linear changes. Henry Ford did not make faster horses. Nothing is innocent and it is key to pay attention to weak signals. Consumers do not use products: they live experiences made of functional and emotional benefits, needs and desires. Non-users and non-traditional competitors (more affordable alternative solutions, coping behaviours…) are formidable sources of intelligence. New technologies, patents, JV’s… can offer brutal new deals to consumers. Get organized to capture a knowledge that becomes wider and wider, from clear to fuzzy. Gather and animate fit-to-purpose cross-functional groups with internal team members and external partners (retailers, agencies, specialists…). Store, structure, exchange, enrich and animate knowledge into a collaborative digital platform that will encourage unexpected connections and draft potential new competitive advantages. Engage early on with key stakeholders on the quest for knowledge and they will become major supports down the road to your collective business, brand or innovation adventure… if you know how to keep them interested.

3. Transform knowledge into insights or hypothesis, then into big ideas. No one can afford to keep knowledge stuck into a database or in a few brains. It has to be quickly transformed into big ideas that will deliver big innovations, additional business, customer engagement, team motivation, talent attraction… Insights are articulated as consumer tensions between a need (or a desire) and a barrier: big insights usually make perfect springboards to big ideas. But insights do not always clearly pop up and we may start with relying on hypothesis (what if…). Formulating hypothesis is especially necessary when trying to decode weak signals or project the business far future-forward. This leads to define and evaluate strategic options. We are at a very creative and exciting stage of the adventure here and need to work as cross-functional teams more than ever. The teams will decide what needs to be evaluated and how it should be evaluated. Some ideas may benefit from a collective gut feeling, based on collective experience and intuition, and should therefore be accelerated. Some insights, strategic options and other ideas will require tailor-made evaluation methods in order to further quantify and qualify their potential.

4. Experiment fast. Think big, act small, fail (or ideally succeed) fast. It is about frugal engineering, fab labs, idea screeners… When I worked on cosmetics in Japan, we had what we called our “Open Lab”: a place with formulation benches, packaging materials and 3D printers where marketers, chemical engineers, packaging engineers and product evaluators would gather for fast prototyping, decide on the most suitable fast evaluation method and align on the iterations of the process. We also designed with a market research agency a very effective “big idea screener” which proved to be pretty predictable of commercial success, therefore helping to better prioritize projects, deliver faster and maximize returns.

5. Build the right culture and organization to manage stability vs. change, short term vs. long term paradoxes. This loops back to purpose, opens new thinking around leadership styles and puts collaboration at the core of team dynamics. One can think of separate teams (operations vs. innovation, etc…) that connect regularly and enrich each other based on simple and purposeful company principles. One can also think of incubating teams like IBM Emerging Business Opportunities, a separate organization created at the end of the 1990’s with a framework adapted to start-up and that enabled IBM to create growth relays in the internet of things, with a pretty low level of risk. These incubating teams can be temporary or permanent. They can (should) include team members who are not typical company employees. I do not think an organization is better than the other: it depends on the overall context. But above and beyond organization patterns, the mindset and maturity of leaders is what matters the most: leaders need to have the abundance mentality and synergize, believe in creative “third alternatives”, make the cake bigger instead of cutting it into pieces.

Turning such principles into practice has been at the heart of my professional responsibilities over the past 10 years in global leadership roles, at major beauty and health companies. This is part of what I love doing at work. I am eager to spot & surf new waves of opportunities on our random yet exciting future.

Xavier Joseph

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Growing brands, businesses and teams with strong purpose, big ideas and smart simplicity.

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